There are well known conventional cleaning devices provided with cleaning units for cleaning aspirating tubes (for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,443).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,443 discloses a cleaning device provided with a needle for aspirating and holding a sample such as blood, and a cylindrical chamber having a through-hole through which the needles passes, and further provided with a cleaning case for cleaning the needle positioned within the cylindrical chamber. The cleaning device is configured to move the needle relative to the cleaning case along the through-hole of the cylindrical chamber. An end piece for reducing the inner diameter of the cylindrical chamber to prevent the cleaning liquid from flowing out into the cylindrical chamber, is mounted on the bottom end of the cylindrical chamber so that the bottom surface of the end piece and the bottom surface of the cylindrical chamber are on the same plane.
The conventional cleaning device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,443 is configured clean the aspirating tube in the through-hole of the cleaning unit after a sample such as blood has been aspirated, and subsequently the sample is analyzed by an analyzing unit.
However, this conventional cleaning device may not produce accurate analysis results when the aspirating tube is cleaned after the sample has been aspirated by the aspirating tube and the sample is subsequently analyzed.